The Truth About Late Term Abortions

02/06/19

In the wake of the passage of the abominable Reproductive Health Act here in New York, and the move to pass similar bills in Virginia, New Mexico and Rhode Island, abortion advocates and apologists have turned on the fog machine to hide the truth. That’s because the truth is horrifying.

They have been claiming that late-term abortions are rare, that they are only done for desperate reasons like imminent fetal demise, that the bills do not legalize abortion up until the moment of birth, that a live birth in the course of an abortion never happens, and that in any event that would not constitute infanticide.

All of these claims are false.

According to a study from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, approximately 1.3% of all abortions are done after 21 weeks. Since they estimate the total number of abortions to be about 900,000, that means that every year, about 12,000 abortions take place after the time that a child can feel pain and has a chance to live outside of the womb. Can something that happens as much as 12,000 times a year be called rare?

Let’s put that in context. There were about 14,000 firearm homicides in the US in 2016, according to the CDC. I doubt that anyone considers gun violence to be “rare”. Consider also that there were 35 people killed in school shootings in the United States in 2018, and that is typically called an “epidemic” or a “wave” in the media. There were about 350 people killed in 2018 in what are called “mass shootings” (incidents that involve multiple victims).

All of these acts of violence are deplorable tragedies that get a great deal of media attention. But the 12,000 late-term abortions are invisible by comparison. They’re not “rare”. They’re being ignored.

Late term abortions are also not being done only in the so-called “hard cases” of severe fetal disability or to preserve the mother’s life or health. The pro-abortion Guttmacher institute published an academic study in 2013 that concluded this: “data suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment”. Rather, the most common reasons for delaying until the third trimester were not recognizing the pregnancy, difficulty in making the decision to abort, disagreeing with the father of the child, not knowing where to get an abortion, difficulty getting to an abortionist, and financial difficulties.

This is not to minimize the struggles of the women who have late-term abortions, or those who are facing the tragedy of adverse diagnoses of their baby. But let’s make sure we’re telling the truth — most late term abortions have nothing to do with “hard cases”, they really are just delayed birth control. And this new law permits that and does nothing to prevent it.

As for whether the RHA legalizes abortion up until birth for pretty much any reason, all you have to know is how the Supreme Court defines “health of the mother”, which is one of the acceptable reasons for a late abortion under the law. It’s defined as “all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age — relevant to the well-being of the patient” ( Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade). There is nothing that wouldn’t fit within that definition, especially since the decision is made between the mother and the doctor who’s been hired to kill the baby.

The idea of a baby being born alive during the course of a late-term abortion has also been derided. But academic studies from Europe have estimated that the number of children who survive an abortion after 23 weeks is almost 10%, and the number rises the later the pregnancy progresses. Since there’s no reason to think that we’re any different from Europe, that means that as many as 1200 babies may be born alive in the United States during the course of a late abortion – babies that could potentially survive with basic medical care.

One study revealed that some babies born after a post-22 week abortion lived as long as 270 minutes, with a median of 66 minutes. The studies show that such babies are routinely abandoned to die of neglect, often suffering in pain as they struggle to continue living. And this could be going on in hospitals where, right down the hall, heroic efforts are being made to save preemies in the neo-natal intensive care unit.

This is infanticide by any reasonable definition of the word. In the ancient world, it was common practice to kill unwanted children by exposure — leaving them out in the open to die. It is just as much a murder to leave a helpless child to die without ordinary medical care as it is to strangle her or dismember her. One of the great social accomplishments of Christianity in its first few centuries was the eradication of this abhorrent practice. We are reverting to barbarism.

We often read heart-breaking stories of children who die of neglect by their parents. Those stories are usually front-page news and result in calls for drastic legal reforms and interventions. The aborted live babies die in silence, ignored and invisible.

There’s no doubt that we will continue to see op-eds in the Times by the Governor and other pundits, “fact-check” articles put out by major media outlets, and “spin” being pitched by TV talking heads. But the truth about late-term abortion is out there, and it really is horrific.

About the author: Ed Mechmann

Director of Public Policy and of the Safe Environment Program. Integrating faith and public life is an essential challenge for modern-day Catholic disciples. We are called to consistently apply the truths of the Catholic faith to the issues of our day, and in our everyday lives. My observations on this blog are designed to respond to this challenge, and to offer a vision of how Catholics can proclaim the Gospel in the public square. I am a life-long New Yorker, a graduate of Columbia College and Harvard Law School, and a former state and federal prosecutor. You can send me your comments at emechmann@archny.org.